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FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

Jonathan Chait (unintentionally) lays out the case for ending the Hollywood tax cuts.

Is Jonathan Chait not feeling well? Not so much for writing the below, but for writing the below (as AoSHQ Headlines notes) so baldly. The topic was the Left’s domination of television/movies; Chait copped pretty much to admitting that the Right’s basic argument is correct, that it also has merit (something that you can’t actually expect the Left to just concede), and ends with:

This capacity to mold the moral premises of large segments of the public, and especially the youngest and most impressionable elements, may or may not be unfair. What it is undoubtedly is a source of cultural (and hence political) power. Liberals like to believe that our strength derives solely from the natural concordance of the people, that we represent what most Americans believe, or would believe if not for the distorting rightward pull of Fox News and the Koch brothers and the rest. Conservatives surely do benefit from these outposts of power, and most would rather indulge their own populist fantasies than admit it. But they do have a point about one thing: We liberals owe not a small measure of our success to the propaganda campaign of a tiny, disproportionately influential cultural elite.

…which, by the way, enjoys a set of tax exemptions, loopholes, shelters, and other market-distorting favors that benefit them far more than the dubious benefits that supposed accrue to us. Now, despite what you may be hearing, we are still going to be in a position to pass laws next year, and when we do pass those laws I think that it’ll be long past time to stop allowing the entertainment industry to evade paying its fair share while taking a partisan political side. Long past time. Which means that I explicitly echo Glenn Reynolds in calling for a repeal of the Hollywood tax cuts.

And before you tell me that Hollywood is too big to take on, funny: that’s exactly what people told me about the public sector unions.